Community-based management of Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM)

Severe acute malnutrition remains a major killer of children under five years of age. Until recently, treatment has been restricted to facility-based approaches, greatly limiting its coverage and impact. New evidence suggests, however, that large numbers of children with severe acute malnutrition can be treated in their communities without being admitted to a health facility or a therapeutic feeding centre. The community-based approach involves timely detection of severe acute malnutrition in the community and provision of treatment for those without medical complications with ready-to-use therapeutic foods or other nutrient-dense foods at home. If properly combined with a facility-based approach for those malnourished children with medical complications and implemented on a large scale, community-based management of severe acute malnutrition could prevent the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children.

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Patrick Ward is the director of ORIE, the Operational Research and Impact Evaluation project for the DFID funded Working to Improve Nutrition in Northern Nigeria (WINNN) programme. He starts this presentation by giving an overview of ORIE workstreams: operations research, impact evaluation, economic evaluation, cohort study of stunting, evidence dissemination & uptake, nutrition research capacity… Read more

Given that 45 per cent of child deaths (that’s nearly half) are because of undernutriton, tackling it should be the highest of priorities for our decision makers. It is also very relevant to note, that a majority of those deaths are amongst the most vulnerable and poorest communities. With this in mind, as most people,… Read more

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